Lugoff First Baptist Church has embraced an Acts 1:8 missions-sending strategy that includes a local baseball clinic, associational missions involvement, trips to serve in other states, and international missions. It all started with a church renewal using Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God.
Lugoff’s baseball clinic: using the greatest game ever played to tell the greatest story ever told.Pastor Greg Sweet, who has served Lugoff First Baptist for 10 years, said, “Back in the 1990s, many churches used Experiencing God as part of a renewal process, discovering God’s vision for the church. Well, a few years ago, on Sunday nights, I decided to again take our church through that study. God used Experiencing God to show our church that he wanted us to be a missions-sending church.
“If missions-sending means our church dies so that others hear the gospel, then so be it,” Sweet said. The church has sent young men to serve as youth pastors, has had one member leave to serve as a pastor, and has seen one member appointed by the North American Mission Board to serve as a missionary in Kentucky.” The church has also ensured that its missions team has a strong budget to work with.
“Our goal is to develop Great Commission Christians; we measure success by whether our neighbors can see a genuine Christian in our daily lives,” Sweet said.
Sweet said that as members look beyond the church walls to missions service, whether it’s through Vacation Bible School, a return trip to Pennsylvania, or an international trip to Trinidad, “people come back more committed. The blessing they receive through missions service makes them more likely to pray for and give to missions.”
Bill Drees, Kershaw Baptist Association director of missions, said, “Lugoff First Baptist is an intentional missions-sending church. Even beyond the teams that go out, it has led the association in providing an evangelistic baseball clinic, and senior adults from the church are part of the associational missions team. The church has taken time and very deliberately moved into a missions mindset.”